The increasing demand for electronic devices for application areas such as automotive, smartphones and the Internet of Things (IoT) has resulted in an increased demand for high performance and high reliability integrated circuits. Electronic devices for these application areas are continually moving towards higher functionality and miniaturization of size. As a result, demand is increasing for integrated circuit packaging approaches that are smaller, more compact and more reliable.
One approach that has been developed is Molded Interconnect Substrate (MIS). MIS is a substrate solution that utilizes embedded copper trace technology to meet the demands for high I/O counts and a smaller size or form factor. MIS uses materials that are more compatible with the thermal-mechanical properties of integrated circuit materials such as silicon. For a typical packaging application that uses MIS, an integrated circuit die is attached to a substrate using a wire bond or flip-chip process. The top of the substrate is covered with a molding compound and external contacts for the integrated circuit are provided at a bottom of the substrate.